Collecting mortality data to drive real-time improvement in suicide prevention

To evaluate the use of government mortality records compared with internally collected data to drive quality improvement in suicide prevention programs using suicide mortality data from the Perfect Depression Care initiative.

Perfect Depression Care (PDC) is a quality improvement suicide prevention initiative within the Behavioral Health Services (BHS) division of the Henry Ford Health System. Eligible subjects were all patients who received services from BHS, were members of the health maintenance organization, and had a medical group physician during the 11-year study period. Mortality data were collected internally and from government-collected death records, and were linked to treatment utilization data from the medical record.

The mean suicide rate was 96.6 per 100,000 during the 2-year baseline period (1999- 2000) and declined to 19.1 per 100,000 during the initiative (2002-2009) using both sources of data combined. We observed a similar statistically significant (P <.001) reduction in the suicide death rate using both the internal and government data sources. There were no significant differences between the 2 sources of data in the mean suicide rates for the baseline and intervention periods (P >.05). The data sources did differ in the capture of unique suicide deaths.

Internally collected data were an effective measure of suicide deaths in the PDC initiative. A combination of internal and government-collected records may be most effective for future suicide prevention programs.